Illusion plus Allusion equals Inconceivable
by charcoalrunes
Summary: We all know the guy behind the conspiracy, "the dragon", is going to eventually get caught. This is not how that arrest will take place.


**Illusion + Allusion = Inconceivable**

**Anything recognizable here does not belong to me, but to those people better-known than I for the creation of these characters and the plot device that I have plundered and merged.**

**Enjoy.**

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><p>In a darkened office overlooking an undisclosed city located presumably but not quotably somewhere along the upper half of the eastern United States coastline a shadow-draped man known to some only as "the dragon" (a name that, had he known some called his as such, he would have enjoyed greatly) prepared himself.<p>

He had been found. His ladder to heightened power so carefully burned wrung by wrung had been unearthed. Damn loose ends and wood shavings buried in ashes, this was not supposed to happen. What got him here in the first was not supposed to happen either, but it had, and from that he had, and now he would have not ever again if he did not clear this damnably priced office space with an incredibly intricate floor plan. Perfect with little nooks and crannies for stashing away nasty little odds and ends of evil breadcrumbs. His roadmap to success he would say, if he were a stupid man, but he wasn't so he never did. His pride never loosened his tongue, only his bank accounts to allow the obscene amounts of money trying to buy silence while he enjoyed this new tier in life. It worked, off and on.

Some people, however, did not know when to shut up. Two were at the top of his list, tied for first, but he knew which exact domino falling would scatter the rest of the line, and after the clattering settled all who were left would never again be able to retrace the steps to find him.

He should have done that in the first place, but the higher above society one climbed the more dangerous it was to reach out and swat someone else off their ladder. You're just as likely to fall to a permanent end.

Still hugged by shadow, with gloved fingers he unlocked and slid open a drawer, revealing a pearl-handled revolver, all for show. From the hidden compartment within the unlocked drawer he withdrew a nasty hunk of dark steel of a large caliber, large enough to remove a man's head if shot right. He would have smiled, and maybe the vicious spread of lip and baring of teeth would have to some predatory creature been considered an expression of amusement, but on a human face the features seemed sinister and ugly, devoid of all humor, crazed with the unbidden lust for survival.

Today would be a very busy day.

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><p>A nondescript van drove casually through the undisclosed city in the dead center of lunch hour. It drove quickly while commuters all sat at tables and in booths, or at bars, for the hour of relative half-quiet on the streets. This was an odd occurrence. Normally the entirety of lunch hour, typically from noon to two, crawled with a perpetually imbalanced ratio of hungry people to sated people, which in turn occasionally produced either ravaging road rage before the cafés became too crowded, or half asleep rollers who had no business being on the road. These are of course the extremes. For the most part the majority of people on the road during lunch hour were reasonable human beings, not craving savages on the hunt.<p>

The people inside the nondescript van, so nondescript in fact they were using a faded deep blue rather than the less nondescript black, were not stuffed into the seats on lunchtime jaunt. Most of them hadn't even eaten today, or stomached very little because of the hunt they were, in fact, on.

He had been found. After so many years of deceivingly useless searching and losing and waiting and playing the long game, it had come down to its final moments. Or, what they hoped would be the beginning on the end of this storyline.

Beckett sat behind the driver and tried not to jostle with the van as it drove. She was in control, unmovable, unshakable. And undecided on how she would react when she looked into this soon-to-be apprehended man's eyes. She reminded herself this was not a raid for vengeance because somehow a seed had grown with the outcome where a gun registered in her name and a bullet with her prints shot the heart of the man with her mother's blood on the soles of his shoes. The roots became deep while she wasn't looking, during all that waiting and playing violent games and winning some but losing a lot of them, that somewhere along the way vengeance had become a viable option. She refused it over and over. And each time she touched the badge at her hip as a reminder of what she could not do. Now she clenched it in her palm tight enough that the image of law enforcement would be engraved in her hand. She still couldn't shake the flavor of a feral growl lodged at the back of her throat, as cold as the metal shouting from her holster. She glanced beside her, at Castle, hoping he could be the strength for her to do right in this task she feared she wouldn't have.

As the view outside shifted from the main strip of the city, and flooded with apartments and non-suburban houses, Castle fidgeted next to Beckett, trying his best not to appear dumbfounded by the whirlwind of information and action this short week had taken. Terrified that he wouldn't be able to go with them or would go and be generally more useless than he'd ever been. As much as he helped, he hadn't the mind for the midst of action this big, this shattering, but he could damn well try. Quietly, he muttered to himself and wrote the words down, feeling his way through this situation in the only method he knew how. The moleskin notebook page filled with thoughts and lines of meaningless dialogue that all somehow managed to rhyme with dead or dying. Or maybe that was just in his head. He attempted to not glance at Beckett, but that was always difficult to do, so he did, just a brief glance, and he found a forceful amount of meaning in the hardness of her blank features. Her eyes were bright with it. He looked at his lines and lines of nothing, and eventually, with the image of her in his mind, they became something. He knew he'd follow her anywhere.

Across from them Esposito waited, his jacket dark, shirt dark, casual slacks dark, all dark like his steadily churning thoughts. Adrenaline was kicking in, filled the car and everyone pretended to not notice, but he didn't. It was there, tangible, overpowering in one particular corner of the vehicle, but he didn't let it derail his focus as he ran through the structure of the plan he structured specifically for this arrest. Firm but flexible, constructed with efficiency and little glamour. They were looking to make just enough of a scene to draw attention, get the right people sniffing. He shouldn't have time to worry about anything but getting his team out alive, but he wasn't expecting to worry about their target's safety. No, that was a lie. He was expecting it to a degree. His gaze stapled to Beckett, pried away again. It was one more burden but he could handle it. Everyone was walking out those doors in the end.

Then there was Ryan, who was too busy listening on the radio channel to consider anything other than listening and staying busy. Through the constant updates and occasional casual chatter that irked him, the car ride and the jarring silence, there was one underlying fact that would never, ever change. He just wanted to see Jenny again.

"We're about fifteen minutes out," he said. "Their plainclothes said they haven't seen anything unusual, and he hasn't left the building yet." Then he pressed the headset to his ear to hear over the rush of vehicles through traffic.

Fifteen minutes out, and all of lunch hour finished eating and were on their way back to work.

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><p>A man with a beard stood outside his car smoking a cigarette. Smoke curled in his wheaty whiskers like little gray snakes slithering through dried reeds. He rather liked the image. Made him unapproachable, yet noticeable. A fine combination for a man who was a driver and yet not just a driver. He was six foot five and kind of broad in the shoulders, but a disproportionate waistline. A gun rested at his hip, a smaller one inside his tan sport's jacket, and a knife that would pride Dundee strapped under the rolled up cuff of his tan slacks. He was, in every sense of the word combination, not average. The shaved head improved upon the projected image he wanted as a tough guy. He'd thought about getting a pricey fake scar to wear on his neck, just under the beard, but that might be overdoing it a little. He had a name, but didn't bother thinking about it at the moment. He was waiting. Smoking and waiting. The real savagery of his well-paid life.<p>

So it was quite an unexpected and unpleasant surprise to get pounced while in the middle of a luxurious drag on his cigarette, shoved sideways and face first into the hood of the car, his knees buckled inward to bring him down closer to the ground. His shock reflected at him in the shiny black gloss. He choked on the smoke in his lungs.

"Where's your boss? Seen him come down yet?" a voice said, delightfully close to the ticklish part right in front of his ear. He tried so hard not to snort but it came out anyway.

"You think this is funny?"

"N-no," the man said, and even in his own ears his voice was a big disappointment compared to his size. Especially then.

Cuffs clicked around his wrists, cold and sharp. He paled. Two hands gripped his shoulder, yanked him around. The officer with the military haircut, bold in his dark Kevlar and surrounded by three more officers—the woman in particular was terrifying; she didn't need to stare so scarily—searched and found the two guns and knife, all of which he took.

"Your boss come down yet?" the officer asked.

The driver-not-driver swallowed, emboldened his stature with a deep breath and put on his game face, brows knit. It usually worked. "What boss, man? You ain't shown me a picture to identify this guy you're lookin' for. How'm I supposed to know?"

The look, and certainly the tone of his wishy-washy voice, didn't work. They waited a firm three seconds; he didn't last the staring contest for two. The woman stepped closer.

"Oh, you mean _my_ boss? Yeah he's still upstairs. Be down in a minute."

The four left him; one paused long enough to stare contemplatively, sizing and filing him up. Then shook his head and jogged after the rest.

"Wait," he said as a few more cops, in plain clothes, gathered him up, walked him off. "That last guy," he said, confused and feeling part way to foolish. "That last guy's vest read 'writer'. Who are you guys? Is this a joke? Earl? _Earl_, _this wasn't funny the first three times_!"

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><p>With Beckett running point, she, Ryan, Esposito, and, lastly, Castle, rather than enter the open-faced lobby, proceeded to the ground level parking garage around the eastern side of the squat but tough building. It was a small garage, and darkened, crawling with looming outlines and the occasional brief gloss in the dark, like fangs or reflective eyes. The smell was of oil and musk and an overall deepening sensation of peril that all four handled with repetitious professionalism, though one was mostly faking it. Three flashlights crossed with guns flickered on and illuminated their surroundings. Here, beside Kate, a Jaguar. There, in front of Esposito, a glittering Cobra. Suddenly at Ryan's immediate left, a vicious-looking Hornet of the Hudson variety. And behind Castle, a well-worn Mustang. All cars of course. Beautiful and waxed dangerously clean, like large black diamonds.<p>

Lightless headlights watched the quartet engage in a well-practiced dance of cover and advance to a door the same green as an older slip of paper money.

Esposito, as planned, opened the door, and everyone filed into the stone cobbled floors, passed an old-fashioned stone-step stairwell leading down to the well-lit lobby. The grays and cream accents and heavy dose of medieval artifacts, all commonly believed to decorate a fashionable castle during those times, were placed and hung with a meticulous sense of detail. An eye that would never miss something amiss. Beside a dull suit of armor in a squat hallway between two adjacent and equally intimately small meeting rooms, three cops and a writer took pause. It was unnaturally and blatantly quiet. Perhaps people in this building went to lunch later than everyone else. But not a yawn from a bored secretary was heard.

"This is really strange," Castle whispered, leaning into the oblong, misshapen circle they created. "If there's anyone else hiding shouldn't we smoke them out?"

With a heavy frown Kate opened her mouth and a gun went off. Plaster and wall shrapnel blew out less than a foot from her head.

Castle hit the floor with an ungraceful thud as the others ducked down, guns raised, eyes on every possible trajectory. Except, of course, inside the room on the other side of that wall which had no door in the particular hall where they stood. The man called the dragon was in there, taking a potshot in the general direction he thought one of them stood in concurrence with the video feed he was watching. His shooting took a toll over the years in light of prolonged blackmail and other slick debauchery. Stepping on anyone he could. That sort of thing.

He switched off the television just as the group wormed their way down the hall. Just one lucky shot. Just one. Maybe two if he could manage.

A panel of the wall opened behind the mini bar in this particular little lounge—the man enjoyed castles, baring one, so of course his own place of sanctuary would have secret passageways and the like. He was no fool. The passageways were also small enough that his shoulders scrapped the sides (never had he damaged a suit in here though) and for good reason. A man like him, he couldn't handle having too many people around to manage while simultaneously not trusting any of them. So he had a small secret passageways, a small staff, very small, and small meetings, a small wife he kept at the country house, and smaller cars so they couldn't carry many untrustworthy passengers. A small amount to account for at every given moment of every day. Plus expenses.

He sighed, but with pleasure instead of exasperation. Complicating life certainly added a peculiar spark he so very much enjoyed.

Checking his gun, finding five shots left that he had better make count, he emerged from the passageway into his office again. The lights stayed off. He slipped into the hallway, which was very wide compared to the first floor hall. The space he needed for the half pillars lining at perfect intervals along both walls in a contented off-white color. In fact, this entire floor consisted of nothing but this hall, the stairwell that was the only way onto this floor since the elevator bypassed it, and his office. And the secret passageway that only he knew about. And the smoking room just off the stairwell door.

It was a very pretty, windowless hall and he loved the half pillars but for hiding in wait to kill people it was a downright stupid place to stay.

He tiptoed back to his office, entered the secret passageway, and decided he could exterminate his pests later. And made a note to not treat this like he did the shooting range. No procrastination. Down in the garage he still contemplated which of his gorgeous beasts he'd take on his getaway. Or he would have done all that, and possibly even come to a conclusion on which car to take, had the hall not been occupied by guns pointed at his chest.

The day just got a whole lot busier.

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><p>"Did you really think we'd come all the way here and not get our hands on the blueprints to this building?" Esposito said, which wasn't strictly true. Castle stumbled into the passageway when they figured which room the shot at come from. It was all dumb luck, of which they had in abundance apparently. No finger pointing on that. They'd rather keep the luck. And Castle too.<p>

Esposito concluded with, "Think again. You have two choices: drop the gun and put your face on the floor and we leave quietly, or you leave in as much pain as you make necessary to drag you out. Your decision, make it fast."

It was all going as smoothly as Esposito wanted, taking curves he hadn't expected but they were in his favor. Beckett hadn't said a word, hadn't actually moved since she planted herself just ahead of Esposito's raised right arm. No blinks, her breath so steady and even it appeared she wasn't breathing at all. But it was all going okay.

Except when their target raised his gun to his head.

Ryan and Esposito didn't flinch. Beckett's back heel lifted as if to propel her forward.

He dropped it again.

"You're right, I wouldn't shoot myself," the one called the dragon said, quite nonchalantly, his feet shuffling backwards towards the only exit from this floor seeing as the cops and Castle stood in the way of the secret passageway. The man grinned as they continued to allow him to move backwards.

And then the plan fell apart.

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><p>Obviously these cops did not run across any real architectural blueprints of his building. Because the builder and all the workers he methodically had killed over the years, and then burned the blueprints as well. And even if they had found his planted blueprints, those deeply buried prints would not lay out the most secret of secret passageways. The one accessible from the smoking room, which is in fact not a smoking room at all because the dragon did not smoke. It was bad for the constitution and people didn't look intimidating when smoking anymore. As disappointing as that was, he had let it go years before.<p>

He hated the taste of Nicotine anyway.

So as he backed away, and they appeared rather confident while mirroring his backwards progression, he couldn't quite help but smile. Ironically. Because they wouldn't expect that.

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><p>"Take another step and one of us will drop you," Ryan said, who had been silent this whole time for keeping up to date with the net of cops arranging themselves outside. Castle remained silent and riveted. Beckett wasn't letting on her thoughts, but everyone could guess pretty well. Unfortunately, that also included their target, who smiled again.<p>

"Good night," he said, and his hand flashed then he disappeared as he flicked a light switch and the hallway collapsed into pitch black, sans the read EXIT sign glaring at them. Someone fired three times into the dark, but the shots hit nothing.

A door opened and shut.

Perhaps a laugh with nefarious tones. Could have been the imagination.

Silence heavier than the dark.

A beam of light broke the latter of the two weightless elements. Castle scanned the end of the hall, then strode forward, Ryan jumping to follow just in case. Castle flipped the lights back on and extinguished the flashlight he'd slipped out of Beckett's grip. He poked his head into the smoking room, which smelled far cleaner than a smoking room should and was pointedly empty save for the painting of a medieval dining hall filled with colorful medieval foods hanging from the wall that obviously was actually a doorway.

"Beckett," he called, then jerked a start as she was already standing beside him, gun still drawn. Castle stepped across the room, and pressed open the door, and waved her through.

With a muttered "Thank you," she pursued.

Half a heartbeat the three men stared.

Castle said, "We should—"

Ryan said, "Yeah," and tailed through the door. Castle went last.

A shout encouraged their swift walk into a light jog. Two guns shots, simultaneous, slapped the jog into a run. The scene they found was just as charged and mostly silent as they one they just left.

Their target was backed into a conference table of a very rich mahogany. Black high-backed chairs stood sentinel at his sides. His gun was missing, presumably shot out of his hand, which he held close to his chest. Beckett leaned just inside the doorway with blood pooling at her feet from a wound ripped through her shoulder.

Just as the thought crossed Castle's mind that it probably wasn't the best idea to allow their target to have his hand so close to possible hidden weapons, a weapon did appear. In his hand the man lifted what appeared to be a bottle, a potion bottle! pearly white and opaque…

Except it wasn't.

It was a fancy-handled gun, nothing more.

But it made a difference anyway. Guns, especially pointed ones, changed the mood of a room rather fast, and the overall mood was already grim to begin with.

Beckett wasn't peeved at the appearance of a second gun, not one of that caliber. In fact, she was unpleasantly pleased to make that gun's acquaintance, but would certainly not look forward to any further introductions or otherwise loud and friendly overtures. So she shot that gun too, no preliminaries, and it just so happened that a finger severed with that shot.

The grimness was now a completely tangible entity, sitting in one of the office chairs, probably smoking a cigar that made the air so thick and not breathable.

Fives shots, three misses, two hits, and one that finally drew blood. She was getting closer to the mark.

Beckett shoved off the wall and stalked closer, her gun, though held in a wounded arm, never faltered.

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><p>The man's face was gray with bleakness, and blood spread like a thin layer of chapstick from where he'd bitten the inside of his check to keep from screaming. His trigger finger, the right pointer, lay obliterated on the floor. He dare not look at it. The sight of his own body parts dismembered from his control would only anger him further. He hated it when things fell from his control.<p>

He'd had her mother killed. He knew the exact woman. Almost saw her before him now, only a lot angrier. He'd witnessed that glint in her eye, seen it looking back at him from the mirror hundreds of times. The look of deciding what to do with the life in your hands. In her case, for him, it was either in cuffs, or dead. Or, rather, dead, he didn't have to assume.

He smiled because he couldn't help himself. He was that bad of a guy.

Her trigger finger squeezed, and it made his phantom finger hurt.

"Where's my deal?" she asked, barely audible.

"A deal." Oh, and he grinned again.

"You bargain with lives. It's not hard to believe that includes your own," she said, her voice soft and made of steel. "So where's my deal?"

Her buddies, that writer included, give her a wide, brief stare but she didn't stray.

He grinned for an unnumbered time today, but this time it lacked humor. "I'd offer you anything in this world if it would do, but it won't. Nothing would stop you. Anything other than bringing your mother back, even a sum of money larger than _he_," indicated at that damned writer, "will ever see, would be an insult. And I think we're beyond insults."

"You're right." She inched closer, her trigger finger the biggest thing in the room. "We are beyond insults, beyond money, power, and beyond even my mother. This is personal. Mine." Her teeth chomped on the word, bit it on its way out, and spat it at his feet. He was going to die, finally, at the hands on an angry young woman who couldn't let the dead be dead. Well, she'd let him be dead, that's for sure.

He stared into the darkness of her eyes, and drank it all in. He'd miss out on so much, but he was glad of it. Better die here, in his own kingdom while it still stood than anywhere else.

So he stared down the instrument that would kill him. The woman, not the gun.

She opened her mouth, took a shuddering breath that shook her shoulders, and said, "And everyone else's whom you've stolen someone from. This is personal, but I don't get to be the only one who watches you bleed. Turn around."

He stood frozen as she approached, the other two flanking her with triumph in their eyes and dark barrels of threat-less guns aimed at his chest.

Funny. He never took the time to realize Johanna Beckett's daughter stood taller than himself.

Her gun holstered, she stepped into the blood at his feet, twin circles of metal in her hands, the never-ending battle of legislation, everything he had killed for to bury, now here to tie him up and drag him down. And there stood a Beckett with the rug in her hands.

"I said turn around."

The days ahead had just become pain-filled eternity...

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><p>A little boy, barely over two, his pink-tinted cheeks squished adorably into his chest, slept soundly to the gentle jostle of the car. Drizzle kicked the vehicle at the speed of highway miles, but the sound of his dad's voice and nighttime outside helped lull the fussy, fever-heated child to sleep.<p>

Sparing a glance into the rearview mirror, only a second off the rain-slick road, Rick smiled.

From the passenger seat a mildly drowsy Kate stared at him, silent long enough that he squirmed.

"So I embellished a little."

"A little?" Her composure eased into amusement. "Not one word of that was true."

"Okay, a lot of embellishment. But the real version wasn't detailed. That report hardly told us a thing. Far as we know, something like that could have happened. Just. With different people." His eyes scrunched. "It wouldn't mean the same thing though."

Out the corner of his eye Rick saw Kate turn to the window dotted with swimming lights in the nearing distance. Her reflection stared just as meaningfully as she did, with same furrow pinched together just above the outer corners of her eyebrows.

"One thing is true. The bad guy _was_ caught," Rick added. "Besides that, the kid fell asleep. _You_ almost fell asleep. For all intents and purposes, I'd say the story did its job."

Rick clamped his mouth shut as a jerk passed them by, spraying the windshield into a blurrier melted construction of the road. Rick slowed a bit, but drove steadily on. Once the extra haze cleared he checked the rearview mirror. Baby boy was still asleep.

Rick went on, quieter, on a mission to ease Kate's thoughts. "That story I told, we know how it ends, Kate. And it finally did end. It's over. For you, for us, for everyone else. It took a lot longer than we expected to reach this point," he glanced at her reflection again, once, twice, threes times as he spoke, "but I just want you to—"

But Kate was already sleeping.

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><p><strong>There are no explanations, no excuses for this. None.<strong>

**Someone take this computer away from me.**


End file.
